Until next week.

This afternoon, I must travel for an assignment, which means I probably won't be able to post until I return next Thursday. If I can find an internet cafe, I may try to log on, but I can't promise anything. In the meantime, here are some thoughts inspired by several very special dads that I know.

In his earliest days, a father orbits mother & child like a hairy, faithful satellite. Reflecting a mother's glow, fathers, too, radiate parental luminosity resembling the Man in the Moon to Mother Earth, forever circling, a guiding light amidst the misleading darkness of the universe.

As the tantamount protector and provider assigned to each home, a man as a father braves the elements, the egos and the IRS to provide daily bread his family. To his family, he is the leading man in every scene; he protects us from traffic, from what's under the bed and even from ourselves. The wherewithall comes from him to patiently bear our risk: riding a bike, learning to drive, marrying. So heavy this assignment to shoulder--the door between love and the rest of the world. And how for him to even come close to the example set by the first father, our heavenly Father?

That's when a father becomes a dad.

More than a mere sire, brute love is stuffed between those three palindrome letters. Dads hunt the world to find the best love to bring home to his children, who then use that love to climb on and wrestle with. Dads prank. Dads eat leftovers. Dads lay down the law. Dads even love in their sleep; ask any child who pulls up a dad's eyelid while he's resting on sofa. He leads his children by example, who will echo his legacy the rest of their days. Every dad bequeaths his knowledge, his skill, his wit and his faith, for these are the only items a man really posesses. And every time a child looks at his or her dad, there shines the greatness that every dad spends the rest of his life living up to.